Google to Focus on LTE, Mobile Money, & Cheap Smartphones in 2011

Google has now established itself in the mobile market as a fierce competitor. Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has taken to the Harvard Business Review to talk about the company’s plans for 2011, all of which are centered on the competitive mobile space.

His highlights of initiatives were to focus on LTE, mobile money and inexpensive smartphones. In a quote from the piece, he states:

“To realize that vision, Google needs to do some serious spade work on three fronts,” he suggests, kicking off with LTE speeds for mobile devices. “8-to-10- mega bit networks, roughly 10 times what we have today … will usher in new and creative applications, mostly entertainment and social, for these phone platforms.”

As far as “mobile money” is concerend, we already know Google is pushing big into the NFC space. With support for the technology built into Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the Nexus S, the company sees that as the next frontier in payment systems.

In terms of cheap smartphones for wider consumer base, Schmidt seems to think developing countries are a perfect fit for Android bargain devices. “We envision literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years” he suggests, “can you imagine how this will change their awareness of local and global information and their notion of education? And that will be just the start.”